The Good Samaritan
by CowboysRednecksandParamedics
Summary: Left alone to die in the scorching heat, beaten and robbed, no one would stop to save a dying young man's life; except for one man. Please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

Martin1

I had seen the Indians coming, but I didn't run. I just sat back and let them ride up to me on their flashy paint ponies that had been decorated for war. I knew that the Crows and the Comanches were on the warpath, and I had heard gruesome stories of scalpings and burned homesteads in the area, but I had still chosen to ride through their territory with some crazy notion in my head that they might understand that I wasn't looking for trouble. I've lost everything to my name because I wanted to take the 'short route'.

I remember quite clearly the panic that set in when those Indians kicked their ponies into a gallop. At the distance they were, I couldn't tell what tribe they were from, but I could see that they were just young bucks; young braves whose courage had been bolstered by 'firewater' and women. They had set the trap, and I was the dumb beast who unwittingly wandered into the snare. I see now that it was my overzealousness and fake confidence of youth that played a part in the larceny of all my worldly possessions.

Despite the awesomeness of the hand of terror that had seized me, I did not take flight. It was as though my bones had been paralyzed by their devilish screeches, my mind turned to mush and my valor had evaporated in the hot sun. I can remember the seething hatred in their eyes as they approached me. Sure, there had been treaties that tamed them a little, kept them from killing and pillaging many of us whites, but now I realize that the chance to pick off one lone straggler, lost with a tired horse, was a great temptation unable of being withstood. My kind had decimated the buffalo herds, massacred their women and children, burned their homes, and driven them off their lands with foolish promises. Had they ever seen any good in a man with a white skin?

I could have pulled out my pistol and shot them down, but like a fool, like an idiotic, sophomoric fool, I sat and stared at those Indians like a half-baked steer.

There was about five or six of them, all had long, straight black hair that had been tightly braided and profusely decorated with feathers and furs. They were tall and straight backed, with dark, almond shaped eyes, and fawn colored skin. All that clad their bronze bodies were buckskin leggings adorned with ornate quill work with beads as well as simple breech cloth, and they carried deadly weapons of different sorts; some carried tomahawks and spears while others carried old musket loaders and well used rifles. War paint of black, yellow and red adorned their cheeks and chests as well as their pinto ponies who were mustangs, well adapted to the rough range that had been their homes since the Spanish conquistadors had set them loose centuries ago.

It was only when they were barely a rabbit's leap length away when something in me found solid footing and made my quaking legs spur the sides of my poor, tired stepper. She took off with a wild shaking of her head, the Indians let loose a new barrage of hellish screams of war, and I heard the zing of bullets whining past my ears. Of course, if they had wanted to put lead in the back of my brain, they surely would have, although at the time I was convinced that I would be dead within the next few minutes and they would leave my scalped body to bloat in the sun.

My exhausted mare gave it her best shot, but I could tell she had already given what energy she had left but my worst fears came true when I felt her front end drop. I was flung over her shoulders as she crumpled to the ground in a heap, breathing laboriously and thrashing wildly as the Indians surrounding us on their ponies.

I curled into a ball on the ground, covering my face with my arms as the Indians dismounted. A few jabbed me with the ends of their rifles and I remember screaming and swearing so that my dear late mother's ears would have turned bright red. Then the last thing in my recollection was a rifle butt flying towards my face, then blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

Feeling the bright summer sun scorching my pale face, I slowly began to pull my thoughts together to form consciousness. My eyes seemed to be glued shut, my limbs unable to move, my brain seemed dazed and unable to comprehend what had just happened. I imagined the top of my head to be a bloody, ripped up, raw mess, devoid from its former crown of straw-colored hair. I knew that scalping victims where sometimes not dead when they were scalped. What other mortal injuries were inflicted on my broken body? Everything was throbbing, but I lifted my shaking hand to my forehead to know for sure if I was scalped. When my trembling fingers lightly brushed soft hair, pure sweet relieve washed over me, calming the quivering that wracked my whole battered body.

Several minutes later, I summoned enough strength to sit up slowly, propping myself up on my elbows. My mare was no were to be found; taken by the Indians no doubt. Only my saddle and saddle blanket where thrown carelessly on the ground, my saddlebags had been destroyed and their contents stolen. My gun and gun belt had been taken off my waist, two full canteens ripped from their place on my saddle horn, even my hat had been stolen from my hair. I flopped down onto my back again and then rolled to my stomach to get relief from the sun on my face.

 _I'm gonna die out here. Unless some brave soul rides through here and finds me, I'm gonna die out here._

Fading in and out of consciousness, baking in the hot sun, feeling my throat and tongue swell with thirst, I consigned myself to realizing that my death would not come easy. It would be long and painful. Near nightfall, stillness was interrupted by one of the most wonderful sounds known to a desolate man; hoof beats. Two sets of them, pulling a wagon. I could hear the wagon creaking as it travelled at a high speed across the rutted ground.

Pulling myself to my knees, I waved my arms above my head weakly. "Hey!" My voice was still surprisingly stronger than I had thought it was. I kept yelling and waving but the wagon was too far away, the noisy creaking and groaning of the wood to loud, the driver to intent on arriving at his destination on time that it rolled right by, leaving me disheartened and feeling completely and utterly alone.


End file.
